Posts Tagged ‘Fail Blog’

It used to be that the only way to import your Facebook friends contact info into Gmail was to do it manually. Now you merely have to jump through hoops. Luckily Yahoo! has a Facebook import function, unlike Gmail. Facebook however, recently removed application tabs like LinkedIn from User Profile, but they do permit it on Page Profiles. So unfortunately importing to Gmail and LinkedIn requires that you first import to Yahoo!

From Yahoo select Contacts > Tools > Import > Facebook

Now your Facebook contacts are in Yahoo you can easily import them to LinkedIn: From LinkedIn select Contacts > Add Connections and enter your email address and password.

Now to get them into Gmail: From Gmail (slightly more tricky) select My Contacts > More Actions > Import. A window will open asking you for a CSV file extension. To get this you must go to Yahoo! and select Contacts > Tools > Export. A window will open and several options are listed, select: Yahoo! CSV and click Export Now. A CSV file will download to your PC Downloads folder.

Return to Gmail and select the Yahoo CSV file from your Downloads folder. Then tick the box asking if you want to add the imported contacts and select either Facebook or My Contacts or New Group. If you select My Contacts your Facebook contacts from Yahoo will merge with your existing Gmail contacts, if you select the FaceBook option your FB contacts will save in a separate file called FaceBook, or you can give it a different name by selecting the New Group option.

Wonder what ever happened to Google Wave? I remember hearing about it from a friend as we stood on the street chatting. It felt really clandestine cuz he practically whispered when he told me about it. It was like a secret cabal that required an invitation – I recall waiting in anticipation for it to arrive in my Gmail inbox.

When it finally did arrive I was ready to start using it but it wouldn’t import my contacts from Gmail, instead I was given 10 invitations to send out to friends. I dreamed about the amazing extensions Google would come out with and the possibilities for integrating it with other social media platforms…but it was all in vain because no one, and I mean no one, used it. I was sure that when it finally launched everyone would get on board, but the launch never happened. Eventually myself and ostensibly everyone else forgot about it…

…the results of today’s fact finding mission that took me all of 30 seconds produced the following explanation for Google Wave’s failure to launch.

Status of Google Wave

As we announced in August 2010, we are not continuing active development of Google Wave as a stand-alone product, but have been working hard on the open source Wave in a box project and on making waves accessible through Google Docs.

We wanted to let you know that we will keep wave.google.com running past December 31, 2010 until a suitable replacement to host all your waves is available. In the meantime, you can now use the export feature to download a zipped version of up to ten waves at a time.

Additionally, Wave in a Box, the project to make it easy for anyone to host their own wave server, has made significant progress on both functionality and community growth. Just last week, the Apache Software Foundation accepted Wave into its incubator for new projects.

Thanks yet again to all our users for giving Wave a try with your schools, businesses and organizations and to the developers who are working on the next steps for the open source project!